Dan, the Newsboy (Illustrated)

by Horatio Alger Jr., J. Watson Davis (Illustrator)

Overview

Dan, the Newsboy was originally entitled Dan, the Detective, and a first edition of Dan, the Detective is one of Alger's rarest. When it was reprinted, the title was changed to Dan, the Newsboy. Dan and his mother are poor. Dan valiantly struggles to make money by selling newspapers on the streets of New York City. After obtaining employment at a wholesale house, Dan discovers the bookkeeper attempting to steal money from the company. Then, he tracks down a six year-old heiress who has been kidnapped. Action, adventure, triumph abound.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781987021608
Publisher:	Dapper Moose Entertainment
Publication date:	01/14/2019
Series:	Classic Fiction for Young Adults , #67
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Horatio Alger, Jr. (January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many formulaic juvenile novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America during the Gilded Age.

He secured his literary niche in 1868 with the publication of his fourth book Ragged Dick, the story of a poor bootblack's rise to middle-class respectability, which was a huge success. His many books that followed were essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured a cast of stock characters: the valiant hard-working, honest youth (who knew more Latin than the villain), the noble, mysterious stranger (whom the poor boy rescued and by whom he got rewarded), the snobbish youth (cousin), and the evil squire (uncle).

In the 1870s, Alger took a trip to California to gather material for future books, but the trip had little influence on his writing. In the last decades of the 19th century, boys' tastes changed, and Alger's moral tone coarsened accordingly. The Puritan ethic had loosened its grip on America, and violence, murder, and other sensational themes entered Alger's works. Public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young. By the time he died in 1899, he had published around a hundred volumes.